Exonerees Speaking Out in Ohio

"Exonerated inmates push Ohio to scrap the death penalty," is by David Yonke of the Religion News Service.  It's via the Washington Post.

Three men who were sentenced to death only to be exonerated years later have a message for Ohio and the rest of America: Abolish the death penalty because the judicial system doesn’t work.

Delbert Tibbs, Joe D’Ambrosio and Damon Thibodeaux, who collectively spent almost 40 years on death row before being set free, are giving 10 talks in five days in Ohio this week in hopes of persuading people to oppose the death penalty.

“I do what I do,” Thibodeaux said, “because I don’t want to see this happen to somebody else. And I don’t want to see the next execution of an innocent man.”

A state task force is reviewing the administration of the death penalty in Ohio, and Thibodeaux said legislators “should not be looking at fixing the death penalty; they should be looking to get rid of it.”

Traveling with the trio are the Rev. Neil Kookoothe, a Cleveland Catholic priest whose efforts led to D’Ambrosio’s freedom, and two British filmmakers, Will Francome and Mark Pizzey, who have documented cases of exonerated death row inmates.

Francome and Pizzey said 142 people have been freed from death row, representing 10 percent of the number of prisoners executed since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s. They named their documentary series “One For Ten.”

Earlier coverage from Ohio includes a case-related editorial and  lethal injection issues.  Related posts are in the activism and exoneration category indexes.